What do You think about Concrete Island (2001)?
Unaccountably, and nearly alone among Ballard's novels, I'd never before read this companion piece to his other great early-70s urban nightmares "Crash" and "High Rise". Envisaged as a contemporary update on "Robinson Crusoe", it follows Defoe in imagining how a 'civilised' man - in this case Maitland, a Jaguar-driving, Burgundy-drinking architect - might adapt to being translated to an existence in which he has to find the means of survival on an inhospitable island, unable to communicate with his own society and dependent on luck, his wits, and the goodwill of someone from a completely alien culture with whom he is thrown together. In this case, however, the island is a patch of waste land in the middle of a motorway interchange, and Maitland's "Man Friday" a pair of equally ill-matched outcasts in the form of a brain-damaged vagrant and a partially-deranged prostitute on the run from a husband and her creditors, both of whom have been living there for an unspecified time and turned their isolation to advantage.The three characters articulate themselves as both sympathetic and monstrous, their situations simultaneously absurd and chillingly believable. There is no authorial psychologising, yet the principal movement of the novel is that of Maitland from cast-away victim, stranger in a strange land, to a resurgent alpha-male using the same sense of entitlement and superiority he doubtless exercised over his business, wife, and mistress, to dominate the existing inhabitants of the island and gain its sole possession - even though he knows that this will probably kill him. The inner reality of the man becomes the outer environment in which he lives, and vice-versa, a truth which Ballard was to explore obsessively throughout his career. The cityscapes and waste ground, the roads and wreckers' yards, the disused cinemas and tyre-dumps, these are the simultaneously familiar and alien landmarks of our contemporary psyche, as well as the physical furniture of the exterior world in which we live and somehow manage to function. As Maitland observes at one point, the island was in him long before he came to the island. It's both his prison and the archaeology of his soul.
—Phil
When Robert Maitland comes off the road in his Jaguar he is shocked but uninjured. He is instantly confident that he will be rescued in no time. However his escape from the triangle of waste ground, surrounded on all sides by motorway, is much more elusive than he could ever have imagined. Ballard writes exhilarating prose telling the story of how Maitland quickly descends into madness, as he finds himself totally isolated from the world he knows. I think the key of this book lies in the repetition within the narrative, reoccurring thoughts and multiple thwarted attempts to escape carry you through the multi-layered story. I loved this book. Even though it was written four decades ago, it’s theme of intense isolation in the middle of a vibrant metropolis still remains brutally relevant to contemporary Britain. Arguably, if anyone were to attempt an unnecessary twenty first century rewrite, the ubiquitous nature of mobile communication would prove a slight stumbling block to the story-telling. However, I think the idea that we all carry on following our own well-trodden path, without noticing those around us, works well for a digital-age reading. tConcrete Island explores ideas of social status and how we all dismiss the underclass, not treating them with the basic human compassion that we extend to most in our lives. It is how quickly Maitland slips out of view and out of the comforting hammock of society, which is so terrifyingly enthralling.
—Andrew
Traveling west from New York City, to Newark Airport or down the coast or inland and away, on a PATH train or New Jersey Transit or in a car on the highway, you first have to cross the Meadowlands. Crisscrossed by old and new transit options and little else, this stretch of marshes and landfill mounds has become an entirely liminal space, a place designed only to be passed through without stopping. Naturally, I've become fascinated with this empty overlooked space as a destination, a place to wander and spend time -- and if crossed, only on foot. This often leaves me in conflict with the general planning or lack thereof of the terrain, leaping crash barriers to dart across empty Garden State Parkway ramps, or ducking between concrete parapets beneath highway overpasses. Real solitude, even so close to NYC, can be found in the boggy overgrown triangles that these features cut out of the landscape. These are places I seek out.I do so by choice. But what if someone found themselves in one of the these lost zones against their will, victim of a motor accident, trapped by speeding traffic, barriers, and the semi-wild post-human landscape? These were places not meant to hold people, so why would anyone think to look for anyone in one? They're not made to be moved in without a car or train, so how easy would it be for the uninitiated to get out? This is Ballard's scenario, an ordinary man immobilized into one such Concrete Island cut out of the city by its mobility-infrastructure and unable to escape, a survival story ironically within a stones throw of all manner of normal modern life. It's oddly believable -- I've seen these spaces, spent time in them: they aren't meant for people. Couple this perfect conceptual terrain, so near to my own weird heart, with a generally quick and incisive narrative and crisp evocative description of the detritus of modernity, and this is up with Crash in Ballard's solid mid-70s not-really-sci-fi high point (as far as I can tell so far). Fantastic.
—Nate D
